Female Face Practice

Here's a collage of face sketches I've done over the past week, with varying levels of sketchiness. Continuing the drawing faces from imagination with no reference thing, where my track record has mostly been "they look like dudes or horrible child/dude/woman combinations", or last time, with "her nose is absolutely cyclopean, and she is ugly" from a few people.

Regardless, faces continue to be one of the most interesting and challenging things to draw. I had fun with these, and I think they turned out better than usual. My goals here, aside from "draw better, it's fun!", is to be more prepared if anyone says "Hey internet person, here's $500, draw this science fiction/fantasy scene", as those types of illustrations almost invariably involve an attractive woman, regardless of hostile environment, plagues and malnutrition, the apocalypse, etc. So, working on filling holes in the portfolio.

Aside from likeness issues, I don't have problems making good faces from reference, so the current problems are from the lack of structures and features I have stored in memory, and maybe getting them mixed up with generic and masculine ones. I think more reference work is in order, but I'll pay extra attention to individual features like noses, as well as overall facial shapes, cheeks, jawbones, etc. And hair, since I have no idea what anyone's actually looks like. Also, I'll push more towards mainstream beauty, as my tastes tend to favor unique and strange faces that a lot of people don't like.

Let's see... #1 has huge features, giving her a slightly bird-like look. #2 is fine, but she looks like a highschool student and I got annoyed at her smile when I was drawing it. #3 and #4 were more challenging to keep feminine, with the long face, and then half-bald head. #6 and #7 are possibly too sketchy to say for sure. Also, I still get a little weirded out by doing this. When I stop and take a look at these, I get two or three impressions of real life people I've subconsciously based them on. It's usually an amalgam too. I can pick out about 12 people on this page for example.

Excuse the huge post. It helps me to write things down and think about it.

End of Semester Sketch week

Here's that value study/ figure drawing thing. It's kinda rough, but It's something new for me, and I'm pretty happy with the outcome. Expect more of these over the coming week!

New Challenge!

Schools finally out, so it's time to start doing sketches again! Yay!

This time around, I'm focusing on skill rather than concept. I'll throw out a concept thing next week. It will be awesome.

This week is another "work on something you're bad at" week, but rather than one concrete piece, I'm going to do a series of little character sketches. I'm going to work on added values, cause I'm awful at that and hate it! However, I like drawing characters, so it's tempering dull practice with something fun! You can tell I'm excited because I'm using exclamation points!

Don't limit yourself to my model, that was just an example, however, if you're good at values and bad at characters, you could just do it in reverse.

Things I'm Not Good At

So I've been trying to develop a polished, cartoony style for a while. One of the main stumbling blocks is the overall lack of cleanliness in my work. So I taught myself Illustrator! This was a good experience, but resulted in my extreme lack of posts over the last forever. I also screen printed shirts of this. Who wants some?

Link to Inspiring Art - Wizard Fight

I did not make this, but I feel that it is one of the best and most glorious images I have seen lately, which may provide inspiration and/or amusement to others:

http://www.laurabifano.net/2008/09/wizard-fight.html

Things I Am Not Good At

This one might not fall under the challenge entirely. It's more like "here's two things I don't normally do/aren't that good at". Namely, lots of colors that aren't gray, and attractive women. (Most women I draw without reference tend to turn out looking a weird ambiguous age, or just plain masculine).

I guess I should make another for something I actively don't like drawing. Possibly feet and shoes, which could be made fun somehow.

Back in Action

Now I remember why I made this a sketch blog, and not a bloody finished image blog. I'm still working on that piece, and will post it eventually, but finished work takes me forever. Expect it to be posted just before the end of days.
Anyway, moving on. Another sketch week! Try drawing something, anything you like really, that incorporates an element you really really hate to draw. Try and mix one of your favorite things to draw in there with it, to make it less terrible. I for example hate drawing rocks, or anything textured really, and clothing, particularly drapey things. I like drawing the human figure, also robots. How will I ever incorporate elements I love and others I hate?

Finish Something - Alchemist

Still not sure if I'd call this completely finished. I could rethink the whole composition and add background and foreground elements, spare limbs, wiring, an alembic, calcinator, etc, but I've procrastinated enough for now.

Week 9- Finish something

I'll be busy the next couple weeks, preparing to move back up to Tallahassee, so I'm going to propose another of my total cop-out topics. I say we go back to one of the sketches we've done, on that shows extra potential, and try and work it up to a new level of completion and polish.

Mount - Carrion Rider

This is kind of a rehash of an older image from 2004. I'd liked the idea of a sort of scavenger cleanup crew picking over a battlefield riding giant flightless vultures. The older version had bird "arms", giving it a vaguely praying mantis/hydralisk look.

Mount

This was a lot of fun to work on. I may even color it, if you can believe that.

Week 8- Mounts

I somehow feel that's it's kind of cheating to make a sketch topic something that I've done an entire series of drawings based on, but I do love it so.
Draw one thing using another thing as means of transportation. Have fun with it.

DEAREST ALL:

My name is Erin Wilson. and I am now a member of this blog! Deal with it!

I want to apologize, Garrett, for not being such a good fearless leader lately. The project has been something larger than I can touch right now, for several reasons. One of those reasons being my first me planned and organized art show!

to those working on the film: don't worry, it's beginning. I sent you e-mails. Let's do this. We can!!!

LOVE,

ERIN

Cauldroni

The Cauldroni, or "Boiled One's" are truly an abomination, even among the ranks of the living dead. A great heap of corpses and assorted body parts are unceremoniously thrown into an enormous cast-iron cauldron, and boiled until all the flesh and bile has reduced to a foul stew of gore and angry spirits. The bones are animated by this concoction of magic, misery, and meat. The tangled bodies writhe and gnash, but cannot escape the cauldron. To move, the bodies must drag around the tremendously heavy cauldron, only adding to their anger.

Had fun drawing this, and actually got close to a level of finish.

Science Lich

This is a sort of reanimated scientist or alchemist who modifies his skull with watertight seals, so that he can pump nourishing chemicals to his eyes and brain to prevent decay and aid in neuro-electrical activity. He uses wiring to interface with borrowed limbs for locomotion and manipulation. Not entirely original, as he's a bit Frankenstein's Monster-ish. Other ideas involved his whole skull being in inside of a liquid-filled tank or hood, but that's probably been done even more by others.

I still need to catch up and do a walk cycle animation some time this week, and I'll try to post some stuff I'm working on.

Let's Call it Week 7- Undead

This weeks topic is Undead. The internet is rife with the cultural flotsam surrounding undead. I propose we do something a bit more interesting. Try to go beyond the basic undead types.
Just going off the cuff here, but you could try a vampire who rather than feeding off of blood, sucks the bones out of people, leaving them a structureless blob. Or a zombie, who rather than eating brains due to some mindless hunger, does it because of a love of knowledge, gained through some magic zombie stomach osmosis, or something... I'm sure you'll have a better idea.

Also, let's get some more people than just Colonel Heliostat and myself contributing!

Week 6ish

This is a bit of character design from something I'm working on. You may see more from this project in the future. Click on it!

Week 6ish- Group Updates

I'm out of town for the week, and too busy to think up a sketch topic.
This week, I propose we show some of the other projects we've all been working on. Show us something impressive. Also, maybe some other people would like to suggest sketch week topics. I promise I won't be terribly judgmental.

Week 5 Walk Cycle

It's a guy with a peg leg. That's not terribly amazing, I admit, but it's an idea that's been kicking around in my head for a while.

Week 5

This week I thought I'd try something different. I propose a two week challange. Why this extra time? Because animation, that's why. I'm going to try and animate a walk cycles that doesn't follow the typical human walk pattern. Maybe someone with a pronounced limp, maybe something with more than two legs. Walk cycles are supposed to be impressive to people hiring animators. I figure they must see about a million of them a day, since I'm sure a lot of people have heard the same thing I have. Maybe something beyond "human being walking forward at a moderate pace" will be interesting.

Venture Bros

Two parts of the same thing. See if you can tell where the big looming head will go!

This is still pretty rough, but I think it has some potential. I need to look at some references before I move on. See how terrible my reference-less Hunter Gathers is in the second picture? I think I'm gonna try some big heavy Frank Miller style black and red for the final image, with more texture than I use. I'm still trying to figure out how to bring out the highlights...

Venture Brothers Again

Quick/rough attempt before I go to bed. Dr. Girlfriend is way harder to paint.

Venture Brothers

Hell yeah, nerding it up in here! Also thank you for reminding me the new season had started. I had completely missed that somehow.

Folklore - Jezinka sketch

Damn, I almost forgot about this topic. Well, after like five minutes of Google searching I found a disturbing and awesome Slavic folktale about these "Jezinkas" which charm people into falling asleep then rip out their eyeballs:

http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/sfs/sfs08.htm

My idea was to do a sort of collage of the goatherder boy, with the Jezinkas in the background trees offering their various objects, some thorns, maybe the eye-less old man... but actually planning all that out with decent composition was taking forever, so I just did this quicker sketch for tonight. Once again, I'd like to do a more completed work based on this. Crazy folklore is a goldmine of inspiration.

Things I'm not happy with - the hand of course, and an overall... Disney-ish quality to the linework.

Week 4- Venture Bros

Venture Bros Season 3 started last night. Venture Bros has consistently been one of my inspirations, particularly in my preposterous character design and animating endeavors. The fact they can make so much show with so little is astonishing. I'm going to be a huge nerd and do Venture Bros fan art. Won't you join me?

Folk Lore

I started doing sort of a Babba Yagga Chicken shack, but that wasn't working out. Somehow, this was the end result. I've kinda been kicking around this design in my head for a while. It's the rough sketch. It might be based on these stories about Finnish Troll/ghost things with deer skull heads. I might have just fabricated that. I'd like to make the things around the skull more ghost-ish. The pencil sketch of the deer skull is actually pretty good. I might try to ink it by hand.

Week 3- Folklore

For no particular reason, I decided to go with folklore this week. Any era, region, or interpretation is fair game. Have fun with this one.

Secret Government Project - Col. Heliostat

My sketch thing for this week. Once again, I'm kind of wanting to redo it. More screens, more pristine underground war room, serious looking generals standing around, etc.

Secret Government Project

I went out on a limb and tried a photo assemblage technique. I spent way too long fooling with it and hated the results. It's not even particularly creative, just some robot. Bah.

I'll try to post some neat stuff from my sketch book. I've been really happy with some of that.

Week 2- Secret Government Projects

I must say I'm honestly very pleased with the first sketch week. I really just expected it to be me posting a picture of a man with a monocle eating a building, drawn on a napkin and scanned in three weeks after my initial posting. Commendations all around.

Moving on. We're all smart people, and therefor are well aware that the government is hiding things from us. Following my general habit of stream of conscious selection of topic, I've decided to make this weeks sketch topic Secret Government Projects. Use the unveiling potential of art to shed light on the insidious plots, or gross incompetence, of our governing officials. Go!

Elegant Giants

My attempt this week is a bit... weak. I got sick, and just kinda put some colors on a rough sketch. It's not at all apparent what's going on. The giants are supposed to be dancing in the River Thames, but I just scribbled a lot rather than drawing actual water. I really should set a better example. Anyway, Colonel Heliostat's is excellent, so the week isn't a total bust.

Elegant Giant

Here's my elegant giant sketch for this week's topic. I rarely draw large scale objects, so it was a good challenge. I'm considering going back and remaking the general idea with better proportions and refinement, with more ships, details, lighting etc.

Week 1- Giants

It suddenly occurs to me that this blog lacks focus of any kind. Therefor, I'm going to arbitrarily institute a sketch of the week program. It keeps the mind sharp and the fingers busy, and sometimes yields hilarious results!

This week, anyone who cares to is encouraged to create an Elegant Giant or Graceful Giantess, or something related to either of those things. I say sketch, but I don't want to rule out animation, photo-manipulation, musical composition, elaborate thought experiment, or any other creative endeavor. Have at.

Introductions all around

Hello, and welcome to the exceedingly famous League of Elegant Giants. The name is all made up nonsense, and doesn't have any particular meaning or importance, aside from the fact that I wanted to draw a giant with a monocle for the banner.

If you're reading this, chances are you are one of my good friends, whom I have invited to join this little experiment because I value both your talent and candor. I hope to expand this blog into a nexus for our current works and projects, experiments, group efforts, and individual accomplishments.

Ideally, we would each be free to post our creative endeavors here and get feedback and critique from one another. I found that the largest flaw in my art education was the lack of honest advice about my work, from both my instructors and particularly my peers. Most of you are shining exceptions from the general mumbled "s'alright" or all too common stony silence.

I realize that this all sounds rather severe, and not like very much fun at all. I also hope that we could work together on short, entertaining, and largely absurd little week long projects. While I have yet to determine the specific nature of these projects or challenges, the end goal is to give us something fun to work on to enhance our skills. Anyone affiliated with the League of Elegant Giants would be free to participate, but by no mean forced to.

Once you've read this, please decide if you would like to participate. If you think "No, this doesn't sound like something I'd be interested in," The please throw yourself off of a cliff and rid this world of your insufferable presence. If, however, you are interested in giving this a shot, and helping me make this something more than a series of rantings and poorly drawn caricatures of Lincoln and Kaiser Wilhelm, then please contact me so I can give you permission to alter this mess for the better. Also, pick out a splendid pseudonym. I find that selecting a military title and opening a dictionary to a random page yields excellent results.
For Example:
General Thrust
Colonel Halloween
Lt. Mahjong
Private Ferris Wheel
Commander Strip Mine
Captain Once-over
Brigadier General Holocaust

All really selected at random from a dictionary! Go on, try it at home kids.